12 Matul Morales, D. (1997). “Don Adrián Chávez, mensaje de maíz y de poesía.” In Pop – Wuj: Poema Mito-histórico Kí-chè, pp. xi–xiv. Trans. Adrián Inés Chávez. Quetzaltenango, Guatemala: TIMACH.
13 Pohorilles, N. E. (1913). Das Popol Wuh die mythische Geschichte des Kic˘e -Volkes von Guatemala. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich’sche Buchhandlung.
14 Pop Caal, A. (1988). “Réplica del indio a una disertación ladina.” In Guillermo Bonfill (ed.), Utopía y revolución: El pensamiento político contemporáneo de los indios de América Latina, pp. 145–8. Mexico City: Editorial Nueva Imagen.
15 Raynaud, G. (1975 [1925]). Les Dieux, les héroes et les hommes de l’ancien Guatémala d’après le Livre du Conseil. Paris: Librairie D’Amerique et D’Orient.
16 Recinos, A., ed. (1957). Crónicas indígenas de Guatemala. Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria.
17 Sam Colop, E. (1999). “Introducción.” In Popol Wuj: Versión Poética K’iche, pp. 13–19. Guatemala City: CHOLSAMAJ.
18 Scherzer, C. (1857). “Introducción.” In Las Historias del origen de los indios de esta Provincia de Guatemala, pp. iii– xvi. Vienna: Casa de Carlos Gerold e Hijo.
19 Schultze Jena, L. (1944). “Vorwort” [Preface]. In Popol Vuh: Das Heilige Buch der Quiché-Indianer
Further Reading
1 Carmack, R., and Morales Santos, F. (1983). Nuevas perspectivas sobre el Popol Vuh. Guatemala City: Editorial Piedra Santa.
2 Centro de Estudios Mayas, Timach (1999). Memorias del segundo congreso internacional sobre el Pop Wuj. Guatemala City: Timach. von Guatemala, pp. iii–v. Stuttgart and Berlin: Kohlhammer.
3 Suárez Roca, J. L. (1992). Lingüística misionera española. Oviedo, Spain: Pentalfa Ediciones.
4 Tedlock, D. (1986). “Preface.” In Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, pp. 13–21. New York: Simon & Schuster.
5 US Department of State (2005). http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51641.htm International Religious Freedom Report Home Page. Released on November 8.
6 Villacorta Calderón, J. A. (1929). “Prólogo.” In Fray Francisco Ximénez, Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente de Chiapas y Guatemala. Guatemala City: Biblioteca “Goathemala” de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historia, Vol. I.
7 Villacorta Calderón, J. A. (1938). Prehistoria e historia antigua de Guatemala. Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional.
8 Ximénez, F. (1973). Empiezan las Historias del origen de los indios de esta Provinçia de Guatemala tradvzido de la lengua qviche em la castellana para mas comodidad de los ministros de el Sto Evangelio por el R.P.F. Francisco Ximénez cvra doctrinero por el Real Patronato del pvueblo de St0 Thomas Chvíla. (Popol Vuh). Verbatim transcription by Carlos M. López, published in the online edition of the Popol Wuj, http://library.osu.edu/sites/popolwuj
9 López, C. (1999) Los Popol Wujs y sus epistemologías: Las diferencias, el conocimiento y los ciclos del infinito. Quito: Editorial Abya. Online edition of the Popol Wuj manuscript, http://library.osu.edu/sites/popolwuj
4 The Colegio Imperial de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco and Its Aftermath: Nahua Intellectuals and the Spiritual Conquest of Mexico
Rocío Cortés
One successful device in the colonization of New Spain was the appropriation of linguistic and cultural knowledge of and about the vencidos (defeated people). While monastic orders applied this knowledge toward their own evangelistic designs, the colonial administration also did not fail to recognize that such knowledge could be used to achieve more effective control of the conquered. The members of mendicant orders – Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians – opened schools alongside their monasteries, as soon as they arrived in New Spain. While the friars learned native languages and customs, the native youth acquired an education in Christian principles in those schools and, occasionally, literacy.
Realizing the potential that these first schools had in teaching and providing knowledge about Indigenous policies, the colonial administration gave its “blessing” for the Franciscans to establish the Colegio Imperial de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, an institution of higher education principally for noble Indigenous1 intellectuals. This project entailed expectations that generations of well-educated Indigenous linguistic/cultural intermediaries would facilitate smoother evangelization and colonization. This extraordinary plan featured much experimentation on the part of the friars in the earlier stages, a time when the colonial design for New Spain was still being shaped by a variety of secular and religious factions that interpreted colonial methods differently. After only three years of the Colegio’s inauguration, advanced native education would be seen as dangerous to social and religious order. Opponents to a higher education for Indigenous students dreaded that knowledge would only encourage neophytes to question Christian dogma. Lack of funds owing to growing opposition to the project and a stricter royal administration, among other causes, would contribute to its decline by the 1580s.
Despite criticism about educating the Indigenous people, and economic struggles, the Colegio became a center of linguistic and historical compilation, as well as of translation of Christian doctrinal materials. Friars and students together designed Nahuatl grammars and dictionaries, assembled a valuable corpus of pre-conquest customs, and translated doctrinal works into native languages with the intention of proselytizing the native masses. But literacy and knowledge of European systems of thought also opened a space for new forms of subaltern negotiation on the part of the students. From the Colegio emerged an educated elite that would influence, directly and indirectly, other subaltern intellectuals in the uses of knowledge as a form of social and political agency. The Franciscans’ legacy of the Colegio project would continue through the exchange of knowledge by members of other religious orders, such as the Jesuits, and by ethnically diverse intellectuals well into the seventeenth century. The narrative discourses by this ethnically and politically asymmetric group reveal a production of subjectivities through struggles of power in a “contact zone.”
The Colonial Enterprise of Conversion through Education
Intertwined with economic and expansionist motivations, the colonization of the Americas by the Spaniards was also driven by evangelization. With the Reconquista of the last Muslim kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula and the arrival of the Spaniards to the New World, Spain became a powerful nation. Supported by the papacy in a series of papal bulls, Spain would legitimize its presence in the new lands through a series of political theories based on the observation of Indigenous peoples’ lives and manners. Taking the European way of life and religious beliefs as the model of civilization, the colonizers developed unscientific images of the Indigenous populations. Indigenous cultural practices and beliefs that differed from the European paradigm were perceived as barbaric. But Christian principles had derived from Roman law for the Iberians. Debates emerged on the legal and moral bases to justify the conquests and “civilization” of the Indigenous people, who by natural law had the right to their own laws and practices. From different schools of thought emerged what B. Keen has called “anti-Indian” and “pro-Indian” policies (1990,108). For some, such as the Spaniard Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who negatively portrayed the Indigenous people as inferior to Spaniards for their lack of civil laws and peaceful manners, a Spanish civil superiority, gave them the right to “civilize” the Indigenous populations, even if by force. On the other hand, proponents of an Indigenous image based on the nature of human equality, represented in the ideas of the Dominican Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, proposed that, since the Indigenous people were